let this moment last forever
by bitterberries
Summary: "Don't make me wait too long this time."


**title:** let this moment last forever

**rating:** T  
**pairing:** jerza  
**disclaimer:** I do not own fairy tail.  
**notes:** I posted this on my tumblr a long time ago and forgot to update it here.  
This was more of a breakdown of their characters more than anything.

**summary:** _"Don't make me wait too long this time."_

* * *

"You're leaving," she says it like a nonnegotiable fact, instead of the question she wants it to be. Erza smiles beside him, eyes focused over the buttery hues of the sunset as she mindlessly props a single forearm over the railing and holds her chin with her palm. She'd known it all along, she'd _seen _it from the moment she woke up, and discovered him leaning indolently against one of the pillars of Fairy Hills. He hadn't given an explanation. There was only a casual_, take a walk with me_, said with a soft voice, and a soft pair of viridescent morning eyes. "Jellal,you're leaving, right?"

He bites his tongue, gazing straight ahead. His brows furrow together in a hard line.

"You knew?" He murmurs.

"Did you really think I wouldn't?"

"…I guess some part of me wanted to believe so," he says, scratching the backof his neck. "But you were always good at figuring me out."

"That isn't true. Youjust need to work on being less obvious."

As she expects, he doesn't sayanything back. She only hears his short, deep laugh, which feels so painfullywarm the brief moment it's there before it's drowned in cold silence. Erzarandomly blows a wisp of oxygen into the air, watching the thin cloud of momentary heat form and dissipate before her eyes, before asking, "Would it be too much to want to know why?"

"...I have to."

She straightens out her posture and rests both hands on the railing, tightening her grip over the metallic barrier which separates her from the hard grassland that pulls out into the city. The soles of her boots scratch against the dry soil of the mountain peak as his words bounce back and forth in her head.

"You have to," Erza repeats slowly. "Won't you tell me the actual reason?"

"Do you really want to hear it?"

"If it's you, Jellal, I'm sure you have a good one."

Two minutes worth of dirt kicking motions, quickly stolen glances, and short lived sentences that all start with the letter 'I' and end with a throaty baritone grunt ensues. Erza lets out a knowing noise, something that sounds an awful lot like a laugh hidden within a breath, because this is expected. Jellal was never built to utter lies at will anyways.

"Erza," he says out of the blue, and she widens her eyes, attentive. "I'm not going to ask you to understand."

She bites her lips. "But I want to. I'm _trying _to."

"You should be angry with me," Jellal whispers.

"Who said I wasn't angry?"

They both meet gazes in this instant, and she takes the opportunity to drink in the light glistening in those forest eyes.

They're so bright.

So soft, and honest, just like it was earlier that morning.

Something twists in her gut.

"Jellal," Erza speaks again, louder this time. There's emotion slipping through her voice. "Just tell me. Why are you leaving? Where? When?"

His reply comes faster now, but his words are so subdued she can barely hear them. "In the morning."

Something seizes in her chest. "Where?"

"I-I'm not sure yet. But I'll decide tonight."

And before she can ask the question, before she can ask _why _he was leaving all of a sudden and hear the answer she so desperately wants to hear, he cuts her off by tucking a rogue hair behind her ear. In that split second, she loses the ability to speak. Her lids flutter lazily, the urge of wanting to let go of the rail so she could keep his hand there making itself known through her rapid heartbeat.

Her face grows hot. "Bastard," she suddenly snaps, clenching her fists. "You're just distracting me. You keep avoiding the question."

"I'm just trying to figure out how to say it."

"What's keeping you from saying it?!"

"You."

The way he says it- so easily yet full of desperation- has her flicking him, right then and there, dead center on his forehead. A grunt leaves his mouth as his hand comes up to rub the reddened skin.

_Jellal Fernandes, you're an idiot._

"Fool," Erza whispers, before crashing into his sweater. He stumbles slightly as she hides herself in his warmth, wrapping her arms around his torso. "J-Just say so if that's the case."

"E-Erza—"

"You can't see me now. So _say it_. Hurry up."

Head shifting a little, she presses his cheek against his chest, averting her gaze back to the familiar colors of the Magnolian evening sky. His smell is strong, woodsy and comfortable, and she takes the time to inhale it slowly.

In the silence that Jellal can't seem to fill yet, Erza grips the back of his long sleeve. Her cheeks rub against him to feel the quality of his sweater. Her hold tightens.

She doesn't know how long it'll be until she can embrace him like this again.

"Erza," Jellal says, slicing the tranquility, arms following suit and gradually wrapping around her. "…I'm still lost."

Erza swallows. _Lost?_

_He didn't mean..._

"Don't worry," he whispers immediately, as if he had read her thoughts, and her nerves ease at the way his tone lifts. "It's not in the way that you think. It's just…a matter of wanting to search for myself."

"..."

"…I guess you could say that I'm still trying to find my place in this world. I'm finally out of this damned maze in my head… but I still don't know where to go. Up until just recently, I've been blinded for a good portion of my life, and I've realized that there's still so much of this world that I haven't seen, there's so much I have yet to deal with concerning myself…

"I don't know how long it'll take. And I don't know what exactly I'll end up finding. But I can't stay here. Not until I'm done."

One by one, his words sink in. The realization of it all hits her hard (what he was doing, _why_ he was doing it), and she finds herself unwinding herself away from him. Jellal flinches at this, but it doesn't take him more than a minute to carry on.

"Even though Zeref is gone, even though I've already been pardoned…and even though, I've already accepted my feelings for you," he starts, trailing in volume. "I don't think I'm completely ready to live the life I've always dreamed of."

A bomb of butterflies detonate in her belly.

_The life you've always dreamed of._

_Wanting to search for yourself._

_Trying to find to your place in the world._

_Jellal...you..._

"I would have told you earlier," his expression contorts into something guilty. "I'm so sorry for—"

"It took you _that long_ to listen to me?" She chuckles.

Jellal freezes in place, azure bangs billowing around him as his pained expression turns into confusion, and Erza finds herself turning forwards, laughing at his silence.

"I lied earlier... I'm not angry, if that's what you're thinking," she says, side glancing him with a force packed nudge. "I'm not. Maybe a little _pissed off_, but not angry. What kind of guy takes a girl out on a date and waits till the very end to tell her that _he's leaving_?"

Jellal remains silent, but Erza continues. "Pick up a romance novel now and then, Jellal, because that's not how you end a date."

"What—"

"Thank you for taking me out today. I had fun. I really did."

"…Erza," he interrupts, voice taking a sharp turn and swiveling into sternness. She feels his hand suddenly on her wrist, chapped and alarming, and hears him breath heavily in what she identifies as frustration. But she doesn't give him a chance.

"—The last time I saw you smile so much was when we were children," she mutters quietly, still grinning, and she chokes down the stupid emotion that wants to make itself known. "I never thought I'd see you smile like that again."

"Erza," he manages through gritted teeth.

"-just let me finish, Jellal."

The blue haired man stops then, relaxing away his grip. He stares at her, concern smoldering within his emerald irises.

"Believe it or not, that was the first time I'd ever been completely carefree," Erza says, pursing in her lips as she recalled their so called "walk".

It'd never been as ordinary as the phrase really expressed. He'd taken her everywhere, from the new aquarium in town, to the far bakery she'd been eyeing in her monthly magazine subscriptions for weeks now. Jellal had made her laugh, and smile like she never thought she could, and because of that, it didn't matter what was going on within her now, she already knows today would always be remembered in reminiscence.

Tears start to sting at the corner of her lids.

And it's now that she thinks; it feels so much like before.

That day she'd grabbed him by his collar.

That day she'd grabbed him by his hand.

That day she'd watched him walk away in handcuffs, and that second she had fled to a faraway cliff from the instance he had left.

The memory of her hunching against a rock wall, dust and pebbles sliding beneath her boots is still fresh.

There had been a sunset then too.

"Hey, Jellal?" Erza weakly sucks in a loose lug of air, and bites her lip before leaning on the railing again, this time looking over her shoulder. She can barely make out his figure, but the memories of him she'd mindlessly cultivated over the years and over the duration of the day start to fill her thoughts; everything from his casual getup to his every feature. She imagines his sharp jaw. His long, pointed nose. The black tattoo that streaked down the right side of his face.

His green pair of eyes, and finally, his wise lips, which she just knows are now both open and wide with some kind of worried emotion, because she was finally crying now, and he never liked it when she did that.

She grins, her subtle laugh flaking into a stupid sob. "I'm proud of you."

"Erza...what are you trying to say? I don't know-"

"You're _finally_ living and seeing the future with your own eyes."

Once the words leave her, her joints weaken, but whatever happens after that is too abrupt for her to see.

Though she can smell it again. Jellal's personal musk floods her nostrils; a fragrance of burning earth and faint cinnamon.

A scent warm and unique, just like him.

Those strong arms of his hug her frame again, but his embrace is stronger than before, tenacious and tender in every way, and his heartbeat is impossible to ignore as it pulses fast against her face.

Clarity is repaid only when one of his thumbs come to wipe her tears.

"_Erza-"_

"-Don't make me wait too long this time," Erza says, stacking her hand over his.

And when he smashes his lips against hers, as the words of his unspoken reply rings in her head, she knows for a fact that he won't.

* * *

**note**: this was probably the most difficult fic i have ever written just so y'all know

it was hard to write mainly because i wanted to really NAIL their characters, and jerza ykno, its just like fUCK why are you so hard to write

i hope it didn't sound ooc. anyways, i hope you guys like itttt~


End file.
